Gawker.com to end operations next week after nearly 14 years of operation
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Honestly as an older gentleman (hehe) it's shocking how badly we have clamped down on free speech. When I was young we would wonder how much wilder can the next generation of kids get? How far will the bounds of free expression be expanded.
The answer turned out to be "not at all". These things go in cycles and the current round of private sector driven censorship (yes, please explain to me how the private sector can't censor) is probably a reaction to the free wheeling days from the late 1950s to about the late 1980s.
Note that this does not affect other sites in the Gawker network (Gizmodo, Jalopnik, etc.)
I mean. I have no sympathy for Gawker, and don't think there are any interesting free speech principles at stake here, I just don't understand it.
That was said under oath in front of a judge and jury. Makes it rather hard to take people ranting about "chilling effect on the press" seriously, doesn't it?
I've been involved in a number of trials and my experience leads me to believe that a lot of what is behind a damages award has to do with the show put on by the plaintiffs attorney. If the plaintiffs attorney can anchor high and get experts to support the damages they are asking for anything can happen. This is perhaps one of the main downsides/upsides to a trial by jury. Depending on which side you are on this is a good or very bad thing.
Without commenting on Trump in particular - you do realize that around half the country support him, right? It's hardly an extreme position.
Consider that only a portion of the population is eligible and registered to vote, and even among them voter turnout is relatively low in this country. And then there's always a segment of undecided voters who just make a choice on election day, without supporting either candidate prior to that.
In this specific case, add to the math that Trump is doing poorly in recent polls, and is disliked by an unprecedented percentage of his own party.
Math aside, given the sheer number of disturbing, extreme things Trump has advocated over the past couple years... if Thiel supports Trump enough to give an endorsement at the GOP convention, this certainly seems to condone his behavior, which in my mind is a pretty extreme position.
They refused to take down the Hulk Hogan video saying it was their right to share. Then when "the fappening" hit, they started chastising anyone who even looked at the pictures saying that we should all respect people's privacy.
So glad they're gone...
And, let's not forget they lost the court case and were deemed guilty and owing damages... IE, they violated the law.
I don't like Peter Thiel, but he wasn't the judge or the jury.
For most of us the scary part of the story is that our legal system is generally receptive to people abusing it to suppress speech. Money helps do that, but it's not necessary to do it. A hand-to-mouth lunatic with a dishonest contingency lawyer can ruin you and suppress your speech nearly as easily as a billionaire. Will you prevail against a malicious and frivolous defamation suit? Perhaps sooner if you're lucky enough to be in a state with a good anti-SLAPP statute.
[1] https://popehat.com/2016/08/18/gawker-money-speech-and-justi...
I have a hard time taking seriously the "underlying narrative" various self-interested news sources are trying to weave.
Besides, the specific case is a red herring -- Thiel simply got very lucky that one of the many lawsuits he was secretly funding against Gawker was so cut-and-dry. Had he not gotten that dropped in his lap, he would have continued funding other secret nuisance lawsuits until he was able to find something else with a substantial judgement (and then would have done what he did in this case -- announce that it was him in order to produce a chilling effect on other news organizations reporting negatively about his investments). You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
That's for Bollea himself to decide, not us. Frankly, I see no evidence presented that he had any objection to the choices his attorney made.
> You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
[edited]
I can and rather easily, at that. Why? Because I can distinguish between cases that clearly have merit and cases that clearly don't.
This "underlying narrative" people are trying to build, as I said, is just an outright non-starter.
Are you in favor of or against someone secretly funding multiple lawsuits in order to destroy a company producing negative press about their investment vehicles? That's the question that actually matters.
Do the lawsuits have merit or not? If they do, the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant.
the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant
You should read about the history of champerty and maintenance in common law.
Obviously not, or Bollea wouldn't have sought Thiel's funding. Are you sure you that's the argument you intended to make? :)
>You should read about the history of champerty and maintenance in common law.
As a matter of fact, I have. I'd be very concerned about both champerty and maintenance ... if I were a wealthy British nobleman living several centuries ago. Those laws were deemed unnecessary in the modern era and repealed. It's just plain silly to bring up stale history.
The problem is businesses and politicians also argue they have a right to privacy.
If Privacy > Free Speech, you end up with a situation where revealing abuses by such people becomes extremely risky and expensive.
Just because Gawker and Nick Denton are pieces of shit doesn't make the precedent any less worrying.
So yeah, they were awful and yeah they deserved to be put out of business but _also_ they only went out of business because they annoyed the wrong guy.
In a better world, Thiel's intervention wouldn't have made a difference, but it did.
Seems to me that the billion dollar media conglomerates could have funded Gawker's lawyers to protect their ability to release people's sex tapes.
That is, with enough money backing your cause, you can get information that people previously deemed newsworthy suppressed.
I have no love for Gawker, but I'm on the fence about this assertion.
What is often shouldn't be.
But that's precisely the question. Who gets to determine what is newsworthy and what isn't?
Can the government decide that independent footage of American soldiers committing crimes abroad is "not newsworthy" and suppress it, sue the organization, demand that it be pulled from the Internet?
Why or why not?
I don't know you and I share a private sex tape of yours with my huge audience. We all agree that I should end up in jail, but somehow is "not that bad" because it was a company the one who did it? That's not a good example for the kids. Bullies should be punished wether they are a person or a company.
Videos of soldiers committing crimes are proof of a felony. A video of Hulk Hogan having sex or Thiel being gay is private life. Soldiers are funded by our taxes. Apples and Oranges.
Why or why not?
We can't abolish laws solely based on objection that the government can hypothetically abuse it. The government can easily abuse the absence of law, after all.